


Virtual Insanity

by fourteenlines



Category: Farscape
Genre: Ableist Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Psychologists & Psychiatrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22253320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourteenlines/pseuds/fourteenlines
Summary: "Aliens. Invaded Earth. I saw it on the 12:00 news. Brought with 'em that one astronaut who died a couple a years ago. Name's...damn, I don't remember. Starts with a C. Like the Jurassic Park guy."
Kudos: 3





	Virtual Insanity

**Author's Note:**

> So John had this fiancé in one episode that I basically forgot about until I re-read this story. We didn't know much about her so this is basically all made up and also she's a terrible person.
> 
> Originally posted circa 2004 to Farscape Friday.

She doesn't hear about it on the news. The first time she hears it, oddly enough, is from a patient, and of course something like this is going to capture their imaginations. They're cooped up inside all day long and prone to latching onto things like this. Crazy things. Fantasies.

The patient's official diagnosis is advanced bipolar disorder and mild schizophrenia. The popular way of saying it is that he's bat-shit insane. Hears voices. Sometimes they tell him to sit and draw quietly. Sometimes they tell him to hit people with tire irons.

"Did you hear about the aliens?" he mumbles.

She continues with her checklist, so many cc's of this medication, so many of that. "Mm?" Distant. Efficient. Routine. She tells herself it's for her patients. She'd never get anywhere with them in therapy if they saw her any other way.

"Aliens. Invaded Earth. I saw it on the 12:00 news. Brought with 'em that one astronaut who died a couple a years ago. Name's...damn, I don't remember. Starts with a C. Like the Jurassic Park guy."

And that's when she knows that it's true. Or as true as it can be, under the circumstances.

***

She was on her way to work when it happened. Cassie said they had a special announcement, Emergency Broadcast System and everything. She listens to CDs in the car; slow jazz and sometimes Spanish guitar. Big Brother hasn't found a way to interrupt that yet.

It probably would have been the first thing out of somebody's mouth when she came on duty, but one of the patients on Suicide Watch evidently hadn't been watched close enough, and there was a panicked flurry of activity from the moment she walked in the door.

She'd sighed, pulling the files she needed and seeing to her patients right away. The first three happened to be catatonics, so they didn't exactly spill the beans.

The fourth patient was Wanda, who was nice and harmless and relatively stable, but wouldn't know reality from a movie if it bit her on the ass.

The fifth was Mr. "Aliens-Invaded-Earth," and she didn't know it at the time, but he was her last patient of the day.

***

She walks to the nurses' station like swimming through jello. Sets her clipboard down with a smack. Cassie shoots her a sharp little glance.

"Pissed about Jerry?"

She frowns. "What?"

"I know you thought you were making progress with him."

She sighs, furious with her staff, now that she thinks about it. "I didn't _think_ I was making progress with him. I _was_." She glances out the window, at the sun reflecting off glass-walled buildings. The smog is low enough that she makes out the glint of the ocean in the distance.

"But?" Cassie prompts.

"But it's done. I can't take it back, Cassie. He's dead. Que sera, sera."

"You're in a bitchy mood today."

"Whatever." She walks over to the window. "You know anything about these aliens?"

And Cassie, the bitch, laughs. "Is that what's got you in knots? It's all over the news, girl. Go to the breakroom. Dan's got it on CNN."

***

John's face is exactly the same, and yet. Entirely different. Harder than she remembers. He was never this closed. She reads a whole host of pains in the way his face twitches for the news cameras.

Jack's in the background, a hand on his son's shoulder. Gripping tightly, unwilling to let go. It doesn't take a shrink to figure out what that says.

John smiles at something a reporter says, and it's the same smile he used to give someone when they said something he thought was crazy. At least, the mechanics are the same. Now, to her eye, the smile is the crazy part.

"Fuck me, those really are aliens," she says, when the camera pans over at the motley bunch clustered to John's left.

Not for the first time, she'd really like to get her hands on John Crichton. But this time, he'd help her career instead of always getting in the way.

She bets he'd make a fascinating research topic.

She also bets he doesn't return her phone calls.

She twists her wedding ring, and thinks about that morning with the rose petals, and the way John's face fell when she told him she was taking the Stanford offer. 

"I was..."

Dan turns and peers at her, his hair flying everywhere. "What is it, Alexandra?"

"I was almost engaged to him once."

Dan takes a minute to figure out what she means, glances back at the TV in shock.

"You..."

"Yep."

He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it, impossibly, even more. "Damn."

Alex sighs. Thinks about her husband, working from his home office today. "I think I'd better take the rest of the day."

"Absolutely. You go for it."

She drives to the beach, twisting her wedding ring again. John's face lingers in her mind. The images of the aliens leave a bad taste in her mouth, like too much wasabi. There was a woman there, human, not John's type at all. Staring at him with unabashed hunger. Alex wonders who she is.

For the last few years, John has been a kind of distant sadness. She'd cried when his ship exploded, because that's what you do for dead college sweethearts. It's been a long time since she's heard his name in the news, and the shaky feeling in her gut is probably shock.

Her phone rings. She smiles, because the caller ID says "Home."

Never once has she thought she made the wrong decision.


End file.
